An ordinary election

March 17 2011

Tatiana Shabaeva

Source: Kommersant

United Russia claims another victory, but at what cost?

Russian
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said he is satisfied with the results of the regional
legislative assembly and local government elections that took place on March 13,
which resulted in widespread victories for the ruling party United Russia.
Putin said his party once again showed that it is “the leading political
force.”

United
Russia had to use a little bit of force in order to show what a strong leader
it is. Observers noted:

The illegal
and unjustified exclusion and removal of observers and journalists from polling
station commissions (more than 100 reports of violations of public observers’
rights), particularly in the Kirov, Saratov and Orenburg regions, as well as
the Republic of Komi;

Attempts to
bribe observers (Republic of Agydeya) as well as threats and an illegal search
(Nizhny Novgorod);

Large-scale
ballot box stuffing (a large number of these reports came from Saratov), voting
for other individuals, including people who were ineligible to vote;

Irregularities
in vote counting, vote counting based on voters’ lists (and not ballots) and
refusals to issue certified copies of voting records;

“Unexpected”
breakdowns in vote processing facilities.

According
to the Golos Association, “at the same time that observers were being removed
en masse from the polling stations, Central Elections Committee Chairman
Vladimir Churov was reporting on national television that the elections were a
success. It was impossible to get through to him or any other Central Elections
Committee member by phone. The Central Elections Committee’s hotline… stopped
working at 6:00pm.”

Polling
station commissions refused to consider complaints from people concerning
voting procedure irregularities in 58 percent of the reported cases. In
addition, 83 percent of the polling station commissions made no note of the
number of complaints in their final reports.

Behind the
scenes, a dirty PR campaign has been launched against undesirable candidates
and election officials have refused to register some independent candidates
running for deputy and even some parties (for example, the Yabloko party’s list
was not registered in the Republic of Komi or the Tambov region).

This is a
partial list of the methods that United Russia had to use to show that it is
“the leading political force.”

The first
blatant violations of democratic election laws in Russia took place during the
1996 presidential elections, when dirty PR tricks were first tried out on
Russians and the public consciousness was manipulated with the help of major
media outlets, administrative pressure and mass violations in voting procedures
as well as vote counting. Boris Yeltsin’s appointed successor, Vladimir Putin,
inherited the full arsenal of these methods and the party he leads has shown it
is willing and able to utilize it.